


There is no Misfortune so Great

by The_Nineteenth_Key



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Gen, Walkers?, Zombies, a fun and factual guide to camping, author doesn't know how to tag, early season 1 for TWD, shifty shane is shifty, the dixons are going to be dragged into responsibility kicking and screaming, touches on sexism, unintentional medical experimentation, veteran stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:06:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14530224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Nineteenth_Key/pseuds/The_Nineteenth_Key
Summary: ... That somebody else can't put up with it.When he closed his eyes, he had just wanted it to be over. Instead, he's dropped in the middle of another world's apocalypse with only a nebulous message from his dead fiance to guide him. He might know a thing or two about the end of the world, but that doesn't mean he's able or willing to pick up where he left off.Still... There's potential aplenty in Atlanta, Georgia, and if there's one thing Stiles can't stand, its a waste of resources.





	1. remember your promises

**Author's Note:**

> SO YEAH. I'm alive, and would you look at that, a fic! 
> 
> I knows it's been a fucking age since I've posted anything, and yeah, this is probably not gonna get regular uploads either, but this is a fic that I've been looking at for a long time. The begining was written several years before the rest of the story, so you'll probably notice some weirdness there but it straightens out fairly quickly. 
> 
> I'll try not to be a total flake on this but no promises. 
> 
> Title is from The Devil's Notebook by Anton Lavey

They called him the General, even though there weren’t any such things anymore, not really. He was tall, broad, covered in scars, and when he spoke people listened, when he gave orders, people obeyed.

That was a lot to ask in the apocalypse.

He wore a mask when he fought, a clunky, metal thing with hollow points for eyes and a mouthpiece shaped like the snout of a snarling wolf. The youngest in the company called it a scare tactic, because when wolves saw it, they ran the other way. They praised him, sung his stories. “Wolves killed his family,” they’d whisper to each other, eager and angry and too young to know better. (The older ones, the ones that were there, and saw, and _fought,_ they knew better. _“That boy ran with wolves.”_ they’ve all thought, just the once, and hated themselves for it.)

And the General, the General spent most nights trying to remember what _pack_ felt like-

  
  
  


Sometimes, when they were outnumbered and outgunned and just about to lose hope, they’d hear it. First on the radio, then, slowly, it would pass from mouth to mouth until it became a roaring cry.

 

_The General is coming,_ they’d shout, joyously.

_The General is here,_ they’d cry, and knew they were saved.

 

(But the older ones, he ones who were there and saw and grieved since the beginning knew, the General didn’t save _people,_ he saved the wolves, in the only way left to him, and they could hardly stand the sight of it.)

There was talk of a cure, at the start, but that was years and years ago. People didn’t talk anymore. And if the General grew wolfsbane in his private quarters, well. That was his business.

 

About a year and a half after Ground Zero, as it was called now by everyone but a few, rumors came in of a strange wolf. One who didn’t attack or rally with the others, but who appeared sporadically across the front lines and howled endlessly. The soldiers (refugees, then) hated it, called it a bad omen. But the General, back before he was the General, recognized grief when he heard it, the mournful cries of his once brother following him across the battlefield like judgment.

(It wasn’t until two years later that he went out in the dark and the howling was abruptly ended that he came back the General, cold and ruthless and so broken he was almost whole again.)

 

And maybe his mask looked familiar from a certain angle, and maybe the tooth around his neck wasn’t quite a trophy- by then, everyone knew better than to ask.

 

The first time the General lost a squadron under his command (or what was left of a command structure, by then) he disappeared and was assumed dead for three days, before he came back with the pointed ears and painted in the black blood of a dozen wolves. They cheered for him, then. Made him their hero, their Wolves’ Bane.

 

What they didn’t know, and only one man bore witness too, was the deathly fever the General came back with, the one that glazed his eyes and warped his mind until he was screaming, howling, begging for forgiveness. The man onced called Deaton clenched his jaw and cleansed his wounds and never spoke a word.

 

Anyone whose fought with the General harbored a healthy amount of caution around the man. In the back of their minds they knew, he was too powerful, too ruthless, too broken, to ever be completely trusted. He tried at first to be something like personable, and for a while it worked. Then people he called ‘friend’ fell, in droves, one by one, alone and afraid in a myriad of horrifying ways, and the survivors were few and far between. They generally didn’t stick around, afterwards. Those days, they could afford the losses.

 

Right when the world was just starting to fall to pieces, and the boy who would one day be the General still had a pack, the love of his life cried burning rivers in his arms and told him she was just one big scream. Barely a month passed before a crazed werewolf with black veins and bleeding eyes savaged thirteen people on a busy California sidewalk. The Department of Non-Human Health and Regulation came down hard and fast, and in the end it was written as a ‘severely unusual reaction to recreational aconite’ with their usual thoroughness. Public opinion, still struggling from the reveal of sentient non-humans that had happened only a decade before, reached an all time low. Stiles worked overtime with the werewolf embassy for several months trying to mitigate a diplomatic solution between the Alpha Pack and the Argent Corps. But eventually, tensions lowered, wounds healed, and people moved on.

 

Then it happened again. And then again, only a few months later, and it became very obvious, very quickly that there was something unnatural happening to these wolves, and it was even more obvious who was behind it. Even Chris couldn’t deny that his father was elbow deep in some sinister shit, but they couldn’t prove anything. He was still working on it when- when… but by then it was too late. Far too late.

 

Soon after, a wolf bit a bus full of school children, and when the beta was shot dead and the surviving kids were rushed to the hospital, they themselves turned and bit dozens of the hospital staff, including two werewolves. All of them were infected. In the span of a single night, three hundred souls were lost to the disease.

 

It didn’t get better.

 

When the government was still standing, Stiles was carried kicking and screaming, half mad onto the last emergency transport out of LA, with Lydia’s blood still moist on his hands, his face. He didn’t think Chris ever forgave himself for running.  


Stiles never did.

 

They were dropped at a refugee camp miles away from anything, and even when supplies stopped coming, people never did. They made a good go of it, all things considered.  Lasted for what, fifteen years? Twenty? What did it matter now, when every day was considered a victory. Deaton was five years dead. Chris walked out one night with only the clothes on his back, and the General couldn’t spare the attention pass a note to change the guard rotation. Stiles though, a part of him was relieved. To see a man like Chris, the greatest hunter of a generation, brought so low, it was murder. Whatever he’d done, he didn’t deserve that.

They made a good go, but there was no denying that it was over now. It was over and he was glad. He was _glad._ It was time to be with his family. He kept his promise, fulfilled his end of the bargain as well as he could, for as long as he could, but it’s over now. He’s earned his rest.

_You promised,_ The man who was once Stiles Stilinski mouthed as he was finally, finally overrun. His knees creaked, and his elbows popped, his scars ached so fiercely when the frost hit he could barely get up in the morning. He’s lost most of the sight in his right eye to an infection, and  the tip of his right pinky in a misfire. He’s had to sacrifice bits and pieces of himself over and over and _over_ again to a cause he loathed with everything left in him. When he catches glimpses of himself in broken glass or metal shined to iridescence for a simple lack of anything else to do, he’s shocked, every time. _When did I get so old?_ He’d wondered, running scarred and broken fingers over the premature lines and raised grooves of his face. His unkept beard was made patchy by scars and his hair was almost entirely grey, with brown clinging stubbornly to his temples. One eye was misted over and unfocused, while the other was unnaturally sharp, his expression set to a permanent suggestion of aggression.

He’d looked nothing like his father, and the thought stung more than he had expected it too, after so many years.

Stiles was ready now, tired in body and soul, and when he closed his eyes for the last time as death and screams rained down around him, he imagined Lydia, bold and brilliant and beautiful. Real in a way nothing else was.

 

_“What a mess you’ve made of things, Stilinski.” She’d tease, with his head in her lap, running manicured fingers through his hair. “You were always the worse at following directions.” In the fantasy, he catches her hand in his, whole and young again, and brings it to his lips in a kiss sweet like nectar. He breathes and lets the sharp floral scent of her perfume flow through him. His eyes grow wet and he sets his jaw to keep from crying. His hands are trembling._

 

_“Hush,” she says, gentle in a way she so rarely has had cause to be, touching her other hand to joint of his clenched jaw and cupping it, “You did so good, baby. We’re so proud of you.”_ _  
_ _That’s all it took for Stiles’ face to crumple, and then he’s heaving with sobs. Little hitches of his breath on the inhale, a low whining that he can’t help but make on the exhale, snot and tears intersped by heartfelt cries and garbled words. Lydia sits with him throughout it all, a steady and capable protector as he bleeds out a lifetime of grief._

 

_When it’s over, she lets him contain himself, pulls back and looks politely into the distance as he wipes at his face and breathes. He doesn’t feel better, exactly, but for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel any worse. “I’m sorry.” He says, testing the words. He can’t remember the last time he apologised for anything._

 

_Lydia rolls her eyes and whacks at his chest, lightly. “It wasn’t your fault, you self-absorbed beanpole. It happened. It was always going to happen. It always will happen.” She fell silent for a moment, hesitant. “I should be the one apologising.” She says, “I Saw that I was going to die, not_ how _exactly, but I knew. I just thought, ‘As long as Stiles makes it out, as long as he’s okay’ that it would be worth it. I didn’t consider how much it would affect you. Fifteen_ years _, Stiles, god.”_  


_He sits up and faces her, reaching out to her and pulling her unresisting form closer. When he pushes their foreheads together he can see that her cheeks are wet with tears. It’s important to him, that she knows. “Lydia Martin, I have been in love with you since the third grade, when you told me my drawing was stupid because I always colored my grass purple. I was creepy, and invasive, and weird as hell as a teenager and you still took the time to get to know me when we graduated. You joined the pack, and you loved my brother as much as I did, and you never, never belittled me for following my dreams. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, and the most beautiful, you are kind, and practical, and it drives me crazy sometimes because we’ve never had an argument I won. I have all of your articles printed in a scrapbook I was going to show you when you finally finished your dissertation, I was going to be your husband. I love you. I’ll always love you.”_ You kept me sane, _he didn’t say, but it was true regardless._

 

_Lydia was crying in earnest now, and when she tipped forward for a kiss he obliged gladly, feeling whole and happy for the first time in over a decade. If this was death then he should have come a long time ago. Still, it was worth the wait. It was worth everything, to hold her in his arms again. They drift like that awhile, trading lazy, unhurried kisses, like they use to on the rare occasion they both had a day off and would lay in bed until the early afternoon, calm and peaceful in a way their lives seldom were._

 

_Eventually, she breaks away to duck her head underneath his chin in a gesture that’s never failed to make his heart beat faster, though it only stopped being slightly uncomfortable after his  growth spurt. The one he’d had when he was twenty-two and baby-faced, not twenty-five and a war veteran._

 

_“You have to wake up now, Stiles.” She breathed into the jut of his collarbone, soft and sad and regretful. He shook his head, confused. “No,” he said, “I’m done, its over.”_  


_“I’m so sorry. You’re not done yet. I’ll come to see you again soon.” She said, breathy and fading, quickly growing cold underneath his hands._  


Wake up, Stiles. 


	2. don't take my sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunny, an introduction. 
> 
> No ones a happy camper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy crap, I'm updating. Woa. I might come back and edit this chapter later, but I'm pretty happy with it.   
> I've got no idea where this is going anymore, btw. If you've got suggestions, shoot them in the comments. Please and thank.
> 
> fun rant about the show's camp living BULLSHIT in the end note.
> 
> formatting issues again. Someday I'll get use to how ao3 works, but that day is not today.

 

  


The Dixon brothers were bad news, no question, but they were also the most experienced of their little hodge podge group at living off the grid. Still, it stung something awful to have to rely on those two retrobates to put food in _his_ kid’s belly, to have to trust them to watch over Lori and the other woman. Just thinking of it had him fuming. Shane watched with narrow eyes from attop his perch on the roof of Dale’s RV. Merle was leering openly at one of the blond sister’s, Andrea maybe, though it was hard to tell, and she was not enjoying the attention. His brother, Daryl, was out somewhere in the woods, ‘hunting’ apparently, though what game he manages to brings back couldn’t possibly be equal to the amount of time that he spends out there. The walkers didn’t waste time on _squirrels._ Getting away from his brother, Shane would bet, and though Merle was marginally better behaved with his brother there, he couldn’t say that he missed having any part of Daryl in camp. He was a squinty-eyed sullen little fucker at the best of times, and behaved more like a stray fucking dog than a human being. Outcasts, the both of them, and primed to snap. He’s seen their kind before.

 

As he watched, an imposing figure cut between Merle and maybe-Andrea and almost immediately Merle, who Shane was positive has never turned away from a situation that could be solved with his own two fists in his miserable life, backed off, hands held up in a classic gesture of do no harm, face contorted in a sneer. Sure, he played it off well enough, but Shane could smell something rotten about the whole thing. When the three of them showed up at the quarry, the brothers claimed that they had been traveling together with the man for only a few weeks. They said that he didn't speak much, not even to tell them his name. Merle introduced him as “Sunshine, on a count of his glowin’ personality,” which the others in camp had quickly altered to the less offensive ‘Sunny’. Still, the man had never protested. Doesn’t do much of anything, really, except stare into space and scare Dixon senior into behaving himself.

 

There was something not right about that man, who looked like something straight out of a horror flick, all scars and thousand yard stares and a quiet, consuming sort of melancholy. He talks some, mostly just to say ‘thank you’ or ‘can I help’ to the woman cooking or doing laundry, and they fell for it like dominos. He’s practically got them eating out of the palm of his hands, all malleable with big wounded eyes, _what a poor, brave man,_ like the rest of them don’t work twice as hard to keep everyone safe while he does _laundry._ Though, he acknowledges, it’s not like they could ask him to keep watch or fight with only one working eye, so maybe it’s best that he makes himself useful somehow. It was more than he could say for Peletier, that was for sure.

 

_And there’s the rub,_ he muses, scratching at the prickly beard quickly accumulating on his face. Why’s Dixon, the meanest motherfucker in Georgia, so quick to step down for some washed-up cripple? Shane watches with keen eyes as the man in question ducks his head in acknowledgement of what looks to be an enthusiastic thank you by- Amy, as it turns out. It was easier to tell them apart when they smiled.

 

He watches as Sunny picks up a basket full of laundry and balances it on his waist before the two of them started their way down to the lake with the girl chattering excitedly. What was it about him that had the woman so willing to trust him? The man looked like he went ten rounds with Freddy Krueger and didn’t exactly come out on top, and he wasn’t open to conversation at the best of times. God only knew what he did before the world went to hell. Nothing about him screamed ‘trustworthy’, in fact just about everything about the man pings Shanes radar something fierce. The man showed up with the _Dixons_ of all people, and anyone running with their kind had to be some manner of undesirable.

 

Shane had a lot of failings, Rick foremost among them, but he has always been a damn fine deputy. So end of the world or not, he was going to do his job and keep his family safe. No matter who or where or Goddamned _what_ the threat comes from.

  
  
  
  


“And Andrea totally just shut him down! He ran away with his tail between his legs and probably still smells like beer. I wish I could be like that Sunny, stand up to people like she does, and you do too! Merle never messes with us when your around. Maybe then everyone would stop treating me like I’m still a kid.” Amy said, happy just to talk to someone who really _listens._

 

He might not say much, but he always shows that he’s paying attention, eyes focused and stance open, none of that ‘uhhuh, you don’t say’ condensation she gets from everybody else. They treat her like a little kid all the time and then expect her act like an adult in the same breath and it was frustrating being too old to play with the kids and too young to talk with the ‘grownups’. Glenn wasn’t that much older and no one treated him like that! They let him go into Atlanta by himself and everything. Sunny didn’t have expectations of her either way, he just let her be and it was nice.

 

Right now he was nodding his head, a sympathetic quirk to his lips as he rubbed dirty jeans against a large flattish rock in the shallows of the water that they’ve been using to do laundry. It took time, this way, and it made her arms burn with exhaustion, and they didn’t always have soap to get things smelling really fresh, like they use to, but it took her mind off things. Mostly.

 

“I think Andrea is the worst of them all. It’s so weird! She’s usually the one pushing me to be more independent, but now its like she thinks that if I’m not kept under supervision all the time like a baby I’ll wander off into the woods or something. It’s so lame!” She threw down the wad of clothes she was trying to scrub the stains out of with a wet _splat_ and was caught by surprise by the wave of water that whipped up to splash her face. She looked at her companion and couldn’t help the loud laugh that escaped her at the sight. The poor man was soaked! His usually spiky hair was plastered to this head and his beard was dripping. He narrowed his eyes at her and she quickly apologised, covering her giggling mouth with a hand.

 

He stared at her for a moment, measuring her contriteness, and snorted, using a hand to wipe the worst of the suds off his face. Amy’s eyes caught on the empty space of his pinky, the scarred canvas of his palms, on the eye that was filmy and unfocused and the unforgiving sharpness of his cheekbones. She looked away quickly, feeling chastised even though Sunny never minded when people stared at his scars. It felt rude anyway, and the last thing she wanted to do was make him uncomfortable, especially since he was just starting to open up to everyone in camp. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder when she saw them what happened. She thinks of his scars and his silence and of the quiet, heavy sorrow that weighed on him so insidiously. When she looks at him, past the hair and the lines and the stress, she thinks that he has a face better suited to smiles.

 

She’s pulled out of her thoughts when he speaks.

“This world is dangerous. She’s just scared.” He says, like it’s easy as anything. Two simple sentences that hit her like a blow.

 

”Oh,” she murmurs, eyes wide with realisation. Quiet falls between them as she ruminates, turning his words over and over again in her mind, silently mouthing the shape of them with her tongue. _She’s just scared._ Of course she is! They all are, so why did it take someone else to point it out?

 

Andrea was like, like fire. She burned bright and quick and warm. Her whole life Andrea’s been there to lead the way, and most of the time, Amy was happy to follow. She was smart, and brave, and _aggressive_ in a way that had their mother tapping her foot and tutting with feminine disapproval, she played rough with the boys and was still the prettiest girl in school. When she went to college instead of staying home to help run the family store, Amy was so, so proud, so excited for her sister to be a big city lawyer.

 

Andrea was her hero, and it never even occurred to her that she could be scared of anything, she had built her such a pedestal. _Not even the walking dead?_ It had been so easy, so convenient to paint her as invincible, just so Amy could have an emotional crutch, and it wasn’t fair. Amy scolds herself, angry that she could be so callously self centered. She thinks back to all the times during the several weeks that she’s relied on her sister for comfort, for food, for shelter, for everything really, without offering a single thing in return. She can’t even remember the last time she said ‘thank you.’. She feels ashamed, like she really was just a little kid too young conceptualise other people’s feelings outside of how its affects her, taking and taking and giving nothing back.

 

She looks up at Sunny through her lashes, grateful for the quiet, honest way that he had. He’s very quick to see into the heart of a problem, and not at all shy about getting his point across. Some of the others, like Lori or Dale, think that he’s slow, or addled, but she knows that he’s just saving words for when they really needed to be said, and then he backs off. He never argued or tried to prove that he knew better then he did, even though most of the time, like now, when he chose to voice an opinion, he was right. He was different, sure, and maybe a little intense, but he was harmless really, and Amy’s decided that he was the best kind of different there was.

 

Later that night, after dinner, she takes her sister aside, away from the others, and she thanks her. Amy wraps her in a hug and says that she’s sorry, that she’ll stick close to camp, that she won’t ever go somewhere alone. _I’ll protect you, too_ she promises silently to herself, pretending not to notice Andrea wipe away tears. _Always._

  


Somewhere along the years, eating became as much as a chore as sleeping, unpleasant but necessary to retain his edge. Nothing tastes right, after one of his early attempts at cooking up a cure with only Deatons nebulous hand and Lydia’s copious notes to help him. He lost a tooth or two, damaged the receptor cells on his tongue and soft palate but was none the worse for wear, really. There was still hope to keep him motivated, back then. He would have done anything, given anything, to make it work.

 

Now, he clears his plate with measured, mechanical movements. He scrapes the edges with his fork and gathers beans and corn to be moved to his mouth where he chews around the absence of two of his back molars the best he can. Even in the Georgia afternoon heat the food will be cold by the time he’s finished. Around the campfire, people are scraping off their plates and putting their dishware into a tub of hot water to be cleaned later. There’s a chore rotation somewhere, but he thinks that it’s more likely that Carol will take it upon herself to do it before it gets too dark see properly. Its filled to bursting when he goes to drop off his plate and fork and sure enough Carol is there, looking quietly put out by the amount. She won’t complain though, never does. About anything. When he silently rolls up his sleeves and begins to run the dishes down the line in the ranger style tub system used by the camp, she stutters her thanks but doesn’t meet his eyes. Avoiding the mess of his face, likely.

 

Its somewhat of a novelty for him, to have people avoid looking directly at him. Before, every person in the militia knew him by his scars, and they took every mark as a symbol of his prowess, of their victories. This newfound anonymity was appreciated, but that didn’t mean it didn’t get exhausting. They work in absolute silence with only the gentle splashing of water and the echoes of voices from the bonfire filling up the void that springs into being around them. Afterwards, she thanks him again and leaves him to empty the tubs for the next day.

 

He’s drifting as he hauls the plastic tubs from their places and dumps the murky contents one by one into the sump dug some eight meters from the edge of camp. It’s almost to the halfway point, and would have to be filled soon, and another dug. The latrines too, now that he thinks about it.

 

He dumps the last of the tubs and looks up sky, marveling quietly over the riot of colors that came with the sunset, before turning away. It’s been only a few weeks since he’s fallen into this world and he’s already tired of it.

 

She said she’d come to see him soon. But she hasn’t, and now he’s left with these strange, naive _children_ who by the vast majority of them have no idea how to survive on their own. He built an army once, organised and ran the only human outpost that could be called successful by any margin, but this is too much. Stiles had resources then, government backing for as little as it lasted. He had soldiers and scientists and farmers, he had had hunters and a goddamn roof over his head.

 

These people had nothing. No homes, no training, no food, no community. They weren’t yet united by a common purpose, they huddled together with their families and shared the bare minimum of resources required to stay, they segregated themselves by margins that no longer mattered. That never did.

 

There were exactly three people with any sort of training and all three of them have separated themselves so thoroughly from the reality of other people that they hadn’t even thought of teaching the others how to do their fair share, and that number includes Walsh, who was as bullheaded as they come. Stiles has made decent progress with the Dixons, could see either of them in leadership positions if they would just take that wounded hillbilly mentality out their asses and realise there was an ocean of difference between not giving a damn and not being worth a damn.

 

Merle had a solid head for tactics when sober, and was no slouch in a fight. He was charismatic, when he wasn’t being an asshole, and might be the only one of them with any genuine military experience. Past titles aside, Stiles’ didn’t count.

 

Daryl was a prickly bag of neurosis and self-flagellation that gave _Stiles_ hives, but he was unparalleled with his bow and the most seasoned of any of them in backwoods survival. The two were just about single-handedly responsible for all of the fresh meat in camp, but neither were social enough to realise that their combined expertise made them the most valuable assets around.

 

Instead, they squestered themselves in a far corner and harassed anyone who so much as looked at them in a way they objected to. Daryl, at least, could generally be cowed into behaving himself, but the eldest Dixon was a complete nightmare to manage. The General would have had him on latrine duty until shit _shined._ Stiles, unfortunately, had no such avenue of correction, and made due with the fact that he scared the crap out of Merle.  

 

You fall out of the sky once and the mans’ convinced that you’re the devil. Stiles has given ample thought to the fact that methamphetamines have absolutely wrecked havoc on Merle’s reasoning skills, but it doesn’t change the fact that he was damn handy to have around.

 

Deputy Walsh was a whole different story. He was a trained professional, has taken a large and mostly unrelated group and organised it well enough to function. He enforced reasonable and sensible safety precautions, like curfews and guard rotations, and kept some semblance of lawfulness to the place. It could have been far worse. However, the man was unarguably narrow-minded in his treatment of the woman in camp, who have been delegated to frankly demeaning chores that could and should have been overseen by rotation, like the watches, which the woman were also excluded from. Stiles understands that there was some deep southern mentality that his California born and raised self might be missing, hell maybe there was some _parallel dimension_ norm that he was completely in the dark about, but the men to women ratio was nearly half, and many of them, like Andrea and Jacqui, were more than willing to contribute. At this point it was straight up a waste of resources, and very little bothered Stiles more.

 

So far, he’s decided that if any of them wanted any chance at long term survival they would need to be trained, likely from scratch, and instilled with some form of community values, though if zombies weren’t enough to bring a group of strangers together, he honestly didn’t know what was. At bare minimum, every man, woman, and child needed to know the survival basics, -water, shelter, food, in that order- and some measure of self-defense, preferably with guns since those were easier to teach en masse then knives, but he’d make do somehow. They needed to secure a reliable source of food, an actual, honest to god building, and clean water.

 

Anyway you looked at it, that was a hell of a to-do list, and Stiles was tired in a way that had nothing to do with exertion. _Fifteen years_ he’s fought. For almost the entirety of his adult life he’s fought and lead and lost everything that ever meant something to him. He’s been broken in every way it was possible to come out intact and then some. He _aches._ He’s not about to do it again. Not when there was literally nothing left. Still. He’s made his oaths, and he’ll keep them. He’ll butt up against Walsh’s derogatory decrees and push the Dixon brothers into making something of themselves. He’ll foster Amy’s confidence and Glenn’s self-esteem, and encourage Carol to get out from under the shadow of her husband. He’ll work with Dale’s inflexible morals and gentle demeanor, with T-Dogs justified distrust, with Jim and his rapidly fraying edges. But the General is dead, and he’ll stay that way.

 

Stiles can’t make them into survivors, but maybe Sunny can point the way, in bits and bobs and quiet moments. This is all that he can do.

 

He just hopes that it will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100% the most unrealistic part of the Walking Dead is how 10+ people (and I'm being generous here) stay in a camp with no running water, no electricity or access to medicine for weeks on end with no sump, no jungle can and no latrines and NOBODY DIES OF CAMP CRUD or had all of their food eaten by raccoons I SwEar to GoD. 
> 
> There should have been piss and shit everywhere, and I mean everywhere. DO YOU KNOW HOW FAST THAT ACCULMULATES??? With just a couple people we're talking a lot, and with a basecamp type of situation the only way to keep sanitary is a big freaking hole in the ground, very far away. Or portapotties. I love portapotties you guys have no idea. I've had camps with the latrine upwards of a half mile away. Did it absolutely suck stumbling in the dark to the latrine and two in the morning? Yes, but you don't crap where you sleep if you don't want to get sick, and if one person in camp gets sick, then by god, one way or another everyone gets sick. 
> 
> I was once stationed on a wildfire with over 4,000 personel, and every single one of us got sick bc some genius was too cool to wash his hands. And camp crud sticks around. You'd get sick, get less sick, and then get sick again. It was the absolute worse.  
> The Walking Dead universe should be damn grateful that you get turned by being bit and not general contamination.
> 
> And when in the middle of nowhere, BOIL YOUR WATER. Jungle can can be anything big and metal, put it over the fire when you do your everyday cooking/ defrosting. I've used garbage cans. Don't drink from this. Boil the stuff you use for dishes, for bathing, for cleaning anything. Cut it with bleach. Filter, boil, and boil again water used for drinking or cooking. And bath everyday, no exceptions, but for the love of all that is good and pure in this world, do not bath where you get your water, especially if its stagnant. 
> 
> Dig a sump if you don't want insects, animals and mud from left over water. Bury the sump when you are done. Use the leave-no-trace dish system! At least two wash tubs, a bleach tub(half a cap or less) and a rinse tub. These are good guidelines for just general camping too!!! 
> 
> Like, I'm sorry for going off but I am PASSIONATE about this bullshit okay. WASH YOUR HANDS.

**Author's Note:**

> There should be another update soon, because I already have most of the chapter written, but guys, I am so bad at updating.
> 
> I'm also notoriously bad at responding to comments, but I read and appreciate them all!
> 
> Edit: I Tried with the formatting but I gave up.


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